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- Record Label: Rhino
- Release Date: Oct 30, 2020
![Joni Mitchell Archives, Vol. 1: The Early Years 1963-1967 [Box Set] Image](https://static.metacritic.com/images/products/music/3/b492cd922092ae033eb1b6be33080b41-98.jpg)
- Summary: The five-disc box set features unreleased live performances, home recordings, and radio broadcasts from the Canadian singer-songwriter before her 1968 debut album Song to a Seagull was released.
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- Record Label: Rhino
- Genre(s): Folk, Folk-Rock, Pop/Rock, Contemporary Folk, Folk Revival, Traditional Folk
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Oct 30, 2020A thorough but imposing six hours of material, this collection is less about any specific unearthed gem than the larger transformation it charts.
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Oct 30, 2020Effectively, this evolution is a biography in the form of archival tapes, and the results are not only historically important, they're absorbing on a sheer musical level.
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Oct 30, 2020Although gems are scattered throughout The Early Years, its last two discs — a homemade demo followed by two 1967 sets at the Ann Arbor club the Canterbury House–are the keepers.
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Nov 2, 2020Joni Mitchell is working in a basic acoustic folk idiom here, albeit with some wonderful compositions. While the “buyer beware” warning isn’t needed since the contents are clearly noted in the box’s title, suffice it to say this is geared toward historians, hardcore folkies and/or Mitchell fanatics; basically those willing to fork over nearly $60 to explore her musical back pages.
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MojoOct 30, 2020Enhancing the listener's wonder at her rapid evolution, shoreline to treetops in under four years. [Dec 2020, p.90]
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Oct 30, 2020A gift for completists, music historians and obsessives. Even for them, approaching it in one sitting is a challenge. Instead it’s better to savour it episodically, because each segment ends on something of a cliffhanger: you can hear her evolve from gamine coffee-shop folkie into a masterful, angel-voiced singer-songwriter as the collection develops.
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